CITV Gas Street cut-outs

It isn't a state secret they were sharing space with Central News, that much is given. I think by that point the bulk of if not all Central's productions had moved to Nottingham, and its my belief Gas Street was never intended for that much besides the local news and the continuity/playout - adding CITV onto it was effectively an afterthought.

I'm not so sure. Lenton Lane was never that busy and was in decline by the late 90s, accommodating it there surely wouldn't have been so difficult?

IIRC the Childrens operation had always been in Birmingham, even during the out-of-vision 90s era. Seems weird that a newly opened small studio would immediately be used for something it had not been intended to be used for.

Gas Street had 2 studios, 1 true studio which was large enough for the CNW set from 1997, the other was used as a CITV continuity studio and weather studio (was on the first floor ISTR). It was an empty space until 2007, with CITV 'set' items still stored in there until the building was sold and refurbished

Oh there are definitely some BBC Three blobs lurking around NBH.

Remember that prior to I think 1997, Central were at the old ATV Studios on Broad Street, but they'd been winding that down for a while. Presumably Lenton Lane was going to be their main production hub (what there was of it) what with having sunk a fortune in it... Gas Street was relatively late to the Midlands stable.

But yes, the CITV output (up until it moved to Manchester) had always come from Birmingham, even the Stonewall years 1989-1991 still came from Central's studios, and prior to 1987 (when the entire output went live), the links apparently came from Central, though they weren't live. Which was always fun when a programme didn't turn up and somebody was sitting there looking gormless...

Central News (West) and CITV in-vision continuity shared a single studio space at Gas Street for a period circa late-1990s/early-2000s. The respective sets were opposite each other. This was an era when the main 6pm CNW was generally the only one to use the main set, with short bulletins coming from a small CSO virtual set instead (wherever that was located).

CNW decamped to the Gas Street foyer for several weeks in the summer of 2005 whilst a dividing wall was built to turn it into two separate studios. It wasn't an equal 50:50 division of the space. CN West got the slightly smaller of the two studios afterwards, with CN East being moved from Nottingham to the larger of the two Brum studios. CITV continuity therefore became out-of-vision, and ultimately also moved to being done in Manchester/Salford.

Network programmes (e.g. Bullseye) had come from the Nottingham studio complex (Lenton Lane) ever since the Brum operation had downscaled from the big Broad Street complex to the Gas Street potting shed. By the time that the reboot-of-a-reboot of Crossroads was axed, it was the only remaining Central network studio production. The site was then sold to the University of Nottingham, and the CNE newsroom moved to an office facility on some far-flung Nottingham business park or similar.

Since the 2009 changes (with both sub-regions now sharing the same studio/set/presenters/crew, pre-recording and all), it is the former "East" studio in Brum being used. The smaller former "West" studio has since been used for non-television purposes by non-ITV tenants of the 22 Gas Street building.

The studio splitting was slightly earlier than that as CNE was presented from Birmingham from early 2005 (or possibly very late 2004).

Ah, the foyer decamping of CNW must've been summer 2004 then. I was a year out.

I stand corrected.

The foyer studio was good enough to be used permanently in my opinion.

Presuming its this set?

Think it's Chuckie from the "All Grown Up" series.

They gave the viewers the feeling that the set was "bigger on the inside than it is on the outside" when really, it was actually small, but as you've said, it became one of the largest sets on its history.

That must be why a lot of people liked Gas Street so much.

Somebody posted the final live link from Birmingham for CITV on You Tube a while back. Its been a while but pretty sure they mentioned thats been in Birmingham for a few decades. Possibly may have mentioned Central. I would love to see that again if it ever resurfaces.